Categories
Concentration Inner vision Meditation techniques Presence and being present Uncategorized

Meditating on the Core of Your Body

Hi Everyone,

This weeks article details a meditation that I teach quite often in my Qi Gong meditation classes; meditating upon and breathing with the core of your body. It is a simple but profound way of learning how to positively connect and direct your subtle energies.

Toby


Article of the Week:

Meditating on Your Body’s Core

Awareness and meditation upon the core of the body is a practice that you find in Qi gong, Indian yoga and Tibetan yoga practices, all in slightly different forms. This article outlines a simple practice that I sometimes teach as an aspect of my Qi gong meditation classes.

What is your body’s core?  
The core of the body (in the context of this article) is its “dead centre” so to speak. In terms of the head, neck, chest, abdomen and hips you could say that the core of these parts of the body is a line of energy running from the top of the centre of the head down through the centre of the brain, neck, chest, abdomen and hips, terminating at the perineum, the point between the middle of the legs. In particular for the purposes of this article we shall be focusing on the core of the body that runs from the lower abdomen up to about the level of the collar bone.

Why should you be interested in developing awareness of the core of your body?

Three main reasons:
1. If you check the way in which your body feels whenever you feel out of balance, physically, mentally and emotionally one thing that you will note is a feeling of being out of touch energetically with the central areas of the body, the heart and the abdomen in particular. It feels as if there are energies in these areas of the body that are dictating your experience. The core body meditation offers a technique for being able to “take back” control of these areas of the body energetically speaking, and thus gain greater volitional control of how you think and feel when under stress.

2. In general meditating on the core of the body enables us to develop the skill of moving energy from the core of the body to the surface of the skin and then back again to the core in a gentle, flowing movement that enables us to rapidly re-balance the qi or prajna within our subtle body, and release any energy blockages that there might be there.

3. Speaking a little more esoterically, the spiritual energies of our being are said to run inside a ‘central energy channel’ along the core of the body, from the top of the crown to the perineum. By meditating upon the core of our body we develop the ability to move our awareness into this subtle energy channel, which in turn enables us to develop deep spiritual states of awareness more readily and easily, though of course it takes regular practice!

Meditating on the core of your body
The nice thing about this meditation and breathing form is that it can be done either as a very short 1-5 minute meditation, or extended out to 20-40 minutes, or whatever time you have available. You simply divide your meditation time between the three steps below

Stage 1: Finding the core of your body
Sit in meditation with your hips, abdomen, chest, neck and shoulders aligned in a comfortable straight line. Visualize a line of light and energy going from the crown of your head down through the dead centre of your torso, ending at the perineum, the point between the middle of the legs. The line of light can be visualized as being about 1-2cm in diameter.
Rock your body gently from right to left to get a sense of this line of light being exactly in the middle of the right and left halves of your body. Then rock your body gently forward and back to get a sense of the line of light being exactly in the middle between the front and back halves of your torso.
You can either focus on the core of the body all the way from crown to perineum, or you can shorten your point of focus so that it includes the core from the level of the lower abdomen up to the collar bone.

Stage 2: Core body breathing
As you breathe in, feel the subtle energy (qi) of your whole body flowing from the surface (ie: the skin) into the central core of the body. As you breathe out feel and visualize the qi flowing from the surface of your body into the core. Do this in a focused, gentle manner for a few minutes.
(If it feels more natural, you can reverse this breathing technique, meaning as you breathe in you visualize the energy flowing from the core of your body to the surface, and as you breathe out it goes from the surface to the core, this is a matter of personal preference).

Stage three, focusing your energy within the core of your body.
Now either at the level of your heart (middle dan tien),or your lower navel (lower dan tien) see a point of particularly bright light within that section of your body’s core. Allow your awareness to absorb and rest within this point of light within the core of your body, letting go of conceptuality and mental activity as much as possible. Remain in this state of letting go for as long as you wish.

Awareness of the core of your body in daily life.
Once you are familiar with the basic aspects of the core body meditation form, you can use the core of the body, and core body breathing as a way of centering yourself wherever you are at any time.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
mind body connection Walking Meditation

On Regenerating Your Energy Body and Walking Meditation

This week’s article looks at the need to develop a healthy mind-body connection and how to increase the amount of subtle energy, or ‘qi’ within our body. There is an opportunity for those of you in Singapore to participate in a Qi gong walking meditation class this coming Sunday morning, 4th December; I have placed the full details of this beneath the article.

Finally, I gave a short talk at the end of a Qi gong meditation class last week on why it is that we sabotage our meditation practice due to an unconscious fear of inner space and stillness. You can read a transcript of this talk here in an article I have entitled “Our Anxiety in the Face of Inner Space and Stillness” .

Yours in the spirit of inner and outer energy,

Toby


Article of the Week:

On Regenerating Your Energy Body and Walking Mediation 

Recently I was at a healing event with my wife. One way or another we both had the opportunity to place our hands on various members of the public for healing purposes. One of the things that we both remarked upon in our conversation afterwards was how little qi, or subtle energy seemed to be circulating in the bodies of some the people we had been working with. It almost seemed like although there was clearly a mind in the body somewhere, there was no energetic link between the person’s mind and body to give life force, sustenance and nurturing to the physical being. It was like there was a biological body, then a gap, and then their mind. So, with this in mind I thought I would pass on a couple of meditations that can help improve our mind-body connection, and increase the amount of subtle energy, qi or life force in our energy body

A good mind-body connection is one of the most beneficial and important gifts that we can give ourselves. If we try and meditate without it we will find that our meditation will become rather flat and abstract. Conversely, if our body has a healthy flow of subtle energy and life force within it then any meditation or consciousness work that we do will tend to feel fuller, deeper and more rounded.
With this in mind I thought I would share with you one of the main meditations that I use to help encourage the circulation of qi and life-force within my body, which is a simple energy body meditation, based around the principles of qi gong. It is really easy to learn, and once you are used to it you can do it not only in formal meditation, but also by keeping your awareness of it in your daily life, such as when sitting at your desk or travel ling. Click here to read the instructions for doing the energy body meditation that I have posted on my Qi gong blog

Another great way to improve your mind-body connection is by doing walking meditation. Walking meditation necessarily increases your mind-body connection because you are combining mindful awareness with the movement of your body as you walk. Another advantage of walking meditation is that you can integrate it into your daily routine as you move around from one place to another. You can read the basic introduction to walking meditation that I have recently edited and re-posted on my meditation website.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com


Sunday Morning Qi Gong Walking Meditation Classes at the Botanic Gardens

Time and Date of next class: 8-9am Sunday 4thth December

Relax, rejuvenate and regenerate yourself on Sunday morning at the Botanic Gardens.

We will be practicing simple Qi Gong and walking meditation techniques to cultivate our inner peace, balance and sense of connectedness to the Earth and nature. Once learned these are techniques that you will also be able to use at other times in your daily life.

The class will be suitable for regular walking mediators/Qi gong practitioners and first timers.

Meeting Point: 8am by the Bukit Timah Gate of the Botanic Gardens, next to the entrance of the Botanic Gardens MRT station. For a map please click HERE

To register or for further enquiries: Email info@tobyouvry.com or SMS 96750279

Class Fee:  $25

About the Teacher: Toby Ouvry is a meditation teacher and artist who has been practicing Qi gong for over fifteen years and teaching it for seven years. You can find more out about Toby and his work by going to www.tobyouvry.com , or check out his Qi gong blog by going towww.tobyouvry.com/qigong

Background information on Qi Gong:

One of the most ancient and effective forms of preventative heath care in the world today, qi-gong represents a series of invaluable breathing and movement exercises which can help our body and mind keep at peak energy levels in the face of today’s demanding and stressful modern lifestyle and schedules.

Qi-gong is the science of working with the body’s energy field. Literally translated into English it means ‘energy work’, or ‘energy skill’.  In these classes we will be learning the art of moving energy into and around our body using a series of simple and easy to apply techniques that will enable you to:

  • Re-establish your body’s natural bio-rhythms
  • Harmonize your nervous and endocrine systems
  • Invigorate your body tissue and organs with oxygen rich blood and vital energy
  • Clear stagnant energy from your system and help build your energy fields to their optimum health levels!

General information on Walking meditation:

Increasingly many people are becoming aware of a need to find a sense of inner calm, peace and centeredness in order to cope effectively with the stresses and strains of modern life. However, it seems equally difficult to find the quality time for a practice such as meditation that can actually help us to accomplish this.

A solution to this can be found in walking meditation. All of us do a certain amount of walking in our life. By learning walking meditation we can combine the time that we spend walking with time spent cultivating our inner peace, stability and happiness. It is a win win situation!!

Categories
Awareness and insight Inner vision Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Presence and being present

Meditating on the Inner Weather of Our Mind

Hi Everyone,
This weeks article focuses on the relationship between the way outer weather functions and the constantly changing ‘inner landscape’ of our mind. It is a useful analogy that I use a lot, particularly when there is a lot of outer rain and wind like there has been for the last few weeks in Singapore!

 

Yours in the spirit of flow and change,

Toby

 

Meditating on the Inner Weather of Our Mind 

Reflecting on the Changeability of our Mind and Mental States

One of the main challenges that we face in developing our inner peace and happiness is that our mind seems to be so changeable and unpredictable. Mind training techniques that we learn work for a while and then just seem to ‘stop’ working without any particular reason. We try and do all the ‘right’ things to make ourself happy and yet sometimes our relative happiness and sadness seems as fickle and unpredictable as it has always been.

It seems like one way or another if we are on a search for inner peace we have to factor the inner changeability of our mind into our approach, and learn to work with it rather than against it.

 

Using the Outer Weather as Our Teacher

One of the practical comparisons that I use when I think about the ever changing state of my mind is that of a landscape and the weather. We all know the weather changes all the time, and most of the time we are able to accept this change without too much of a fuss. This is because we know that it is the nature of weather in a landscape to go through cycles and transformations. There are periods of sunshine, brightness and growth, periods of rain, gloom and cold. This is just the nature of weather.

Similarly if we think about our own mind as existing within the context of the group mind of humanity, or Planetary mind, we can start to understand that there are different “inner weather conditions” that come and go within this inner group landscape.

There are different energies, moods, emotions and thought patterns flowing through the group mind all the time, as well as within the particular landscape of our own mind as an individual. The difference between our approach to the outer weather and our inner weather is that perhaps too much of the time we take our inner weather too personally and too seriously.

Perhaps we can try a new approach where we consciously choose to view the inner weather and landscape of our mind a little more lightly and patiently, like we view the outer weather?

 

Meditating on the Inner Weather of the Mind

The way I meditate on the inner weather of the mind is not so much a formal technique as simply a perspective or lens through which I choose to view whatever is going on in my mind. If I feel happy, glad, joyful, uplifted etc… I think about this as bright skies, sunlight, bubbling streams, plants in bloom and so forth. I go with the flow of this good weather, knowing that it won’t last forever, but will quite naturally change as time passes by.

Similarly if my mind feels dark and gloomy I see no reason to panic, it is just like a cloudy or rainy day. On this type of day things may feel a little more difficult of challenging, but really there is often nothing really ‘wrong’ so to speak, it is just a passing phase that will go away in its own time quite naturally if we hold it lightly and don’t try and fight with it or take it too personally.

I find approaching the ever changing nature of my mind in this way a very good way of staying simple, centered and just going with the flow of whatever is arising.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
One Minute Mindfulness

Mindful of the Stress of Living in an Emergent Time

tobyouvry.com
www.tobyouvry.com

An emergent time is a time in history where there is a large amount of change, innovation, transformation and transformation going on within society and on the Planet as a whole.

All of this change and transformation can also give rise to the perception that there is more conflict, stress, confrontation, agitation and despair in the world, and that we ourselves as individuals are under more pressure, both on a day to day work/life level, and on an existential level.

I’m not sure whether there has ever been a time in known history where there has been as much change as there is going on currently in our time, or a time where the problems that we are facing, (climate, pollution, economy etc..) have ever been so global in their nature. So many challenges, wonders and horrors seem to be emerging all around us.

One question that I find it interesting to ask myself is “How am I responding or reacting to the pace of change? Do I feel and experience it as a good thing with a lot of positives, or is it something that my mind contracts away from with aversion or fear?”

Like everyone else I think I inevitably feel a certain degree of stress with regard to the pace of life these days, but I think it really helps me to have made a definite choice to envision our human and planetary future evolving in a wonderful, exiting and creative way toward a better future. This involves me making definite specific, practical visionary choices. For example:

– When I contemplate the global overfishing crisis, I imagine how it might lead to the creation of multiple marine reserves where humans actively start to protect and cherish life in the sea on a large scale (This is already starting to happen).

– When I think about fundamentally self-centered tendency that so many people seem to be stuck in, I wonder if the fact that we are all getting crowded into such tightly packed spaces (due to population numbers) will gradually start forcing us all to be a little less selfish, and discover that working together will really produce a better world.

– I can imagine that the internet will become a cause for everyone to become more educated and globally aware.

Of course I really can’t be sure what is going to happen with any of these things, but moving  into a future that seems to be e merging so fast, I think we all need to think consciously about what that future may turn into, and start holding a positive picture in whatever way it feel appropriate!

Practical Suggestion:

– Take one emergent crisis in our world that you think of often.

– Think creatively about the good that may come from it.

– Hold that vision of that good in your mind for a minute

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Enjoyed this post? Why not sign up for Toby’s free Creative Meditations E-Newsletter?

Check out Toby’s Meditation Classes

 

Categories
One Minute Mindfulness

What Does Liberation From Suffering Mean?

Does liberation in the spiritual sense from suffering mean that we no longer feel any pain? I tend to think that we will still feel pain of one form or another after we have been liberated, but that pain will not be added to by additional mental suffering and negativeness.

To be liberated from suffering means for example that when you are in physical pain you no longer add to that pain by trying yourself up in knots about the situation you are in. You simply accept the pain as it is, if you can alleviate it you do so through your actions, but if it is just a matter of enduring it with patience,  you can do so without your mind making things any worse than they need to be.

If you can accept pain without it giving rise to mental suffering, then in a very real sense you are liberated from suffering.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot over the last 36 hours or so as my mind and body seem to be a in a certain amount of pain, and chaos. There is plenty of opportunity to buy into it and create suffering from the pain, but as long as I realize I have the choice not to and am mindful to exercise that choice there is no real problem. Pain does not need to become suffering.

 

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Enjoyed this post? Why not sign up for Toby’s free Creative Meditations E-Newsletter?

Check out Toby’s Meditation Classes

 

Categories
Inner vision Meditation techniques

Meditating on the Power of Your Creative Imagination

The Benefits of This Meditation
This article explains a three stage meditation on our creative imagination. The aims and benefits of doing this meditation are various:

  • It strengthens general mindfulness and overall awareness of the contents of our mind, and gives us a greater appreciation of our own imaginative power
  • It develops our concentration and skill in learning how to visualize and hold images in our mind
  • It helps us to let go of the thoughts and images in our mind and relax into the deep formless space that lies ‘behind’ the normal daily chatter of our mind.

This meditation can be done in as short a period of time as three minutes, but optimally somewhere between ten and twenty minutes is a good time. Whatever period of time you set aside, your time should be spent equally between the three stages below. So for example in a nine minute meditation three minutes would be spent on each stage.

Stage 1: Watching the Mind and Writing Down its Contents
During this stage I recommend that you actually get a pen and paper/notebook and actually write down all the thoughts, images and feelings that pop up in your stream of consciousness. The point of this exercise is to see and realize clearly how your mind is continually and imaginatively generating thoughts, images and feelings. Whether we like it or not we and our mind are tremendously and powerfully creative. When we start to see this we can start to appreciate and take responsibility for our imaginative creativity.

Stage 2: Focusing and Concentrating on a Single Positive Image
During this second stage simply select one of the more positive and meaningful images that has been flowing through your mind and focus on it exclusively, trying to build it as a clear image in your mind eye. Please note that when I say “image” this includes sounds such as a musical refrain.
For example if I remembered a woodland from my childhood I see and picture myself in that place as clearly as possible, paying attention to the textures, colours, forms, smells, tastes and sounds of that environment. Generating and holding pictures in the mind clearly takes practice at first, but you will find that over time it can be resurrected as a natural skill that we all have.
Initially it can feel a little difficult visualizing because we are so used to having images provided for us by TV and cinema, thus our imaginary powers have become a little lazy.

Stage 3: Relaxing Into the Formless Source of Your Creativity
The final stage of the meditation is to relax your mind as much as possible and allow all images and thoughts to fade from your awareness; so that all is left is the clarity and inner space of your own consciousness. This inner space is actually the hidden source from which all the creative images of your mind arise, very much like the way in which the space and unconsciousness of deep sleep give rise to the inner worlds of dreams. Practice watching and staying with this inner space and clarity for the remainder of the meditation.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Enjoyed this post? Why not sign up for Toby’s free Creative Meditations E-Newsletter?

Check out Toby’s Meditation Classes

Categories
Awareness and insight Inner vision Meditation and Psychology Motivation and scope

The Three Purposes of Meditation

Different people come to meditation for different reasons. In recent times meditation has come into public awareness as a method for dealing with many stresses and strains that contemporary life places us under.

Traditionally meditation has been used as a method for communing with the divine and seeking enlightenment.

A third use of meditation has been as a method for building the power of our mind and thereby helping us to fulfill our potential in whatever our chosen field of excellence is. For example athletes use meditation as a way to enhance their performance, and people studying for exams can use meditation as a method of enhancing their mental clarity and thereby their ability to retain the information they need to remember.

This article will look at the purposes and benefits of meditation under three headings:

1)      Meditation as therapy
2)      Meditation as an art
3)      Meditation as a spiritual path.

What is meditation?
Before we get into the three purposes of meditation, here are two definitions of meditation that people may find helpful:

Meditation is any method or technique that trains our awareness and attention to focus upon a positive object. This definition can be applied to meditation both as a formal, focused exercise, but also as a general practice whilst going about our daily life. A “positive object” here means any object that when we focus upon it with our awareness causes our mind to become cal and peaceful.
– Meditation is a mental practice that causes our mind and body to tend toward union or singularity. Normally in our daily life our mind tends toward distraction, movement and diversity. Meditation is  any exercise that helps us to consciously reduce the amount of distractions and mental busyness in our head, and helps us to become lucid, focused, clear minded and unified.

I could obviously talk quite a lot more about these definitions, but I wanted to include them in this article so that we can now talk about the three purposes of meditation in a less abstract manner below.

1) Meditation as Therapy – When we talk about meditation as a therapy, we are talking about the capacity of meditation to fix and/or help to heal the parts of our mind that are “broken” or otherwise dysfunctional. Meditation helps to ease chronic anxiety, unrelenting mental busyness, obsessive focusing on the negative and other afflictions that directly and indirectly sabotage the fundamental happy and easy daily functioning of our body and mind. In this sense meditation can be seen as a therapeutic activity.

2) Meditation as an Art – Once we have achieved a basic level of healing and functionality in our mind through meditation we can then start to use it as a creative method for developing our inner freedom and autonomy. Living a life of inner freedom means developing the following inner qualities through our meditation practice; awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy.

Awareness, to quote the psychologist Eric Berne is the “The capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one’s own way, and not the way one was taught”. This means developing the art of seeing our present moment experience directly without past memories getting in the way and interfering.

Spontaneity means to be able to respond to life’s experiences in a way that is creative and intelligently improvisatory, rather than mechanical and without feeling.

Intimacy means to feel life deeply and authentically without looking to continually place barriers and defense mechanisms between yourself and what is going on in front of you. To practice intimacy means to not be afraid of one’s own vulnerability and sensitivity, and learning when to expose it in appropriate, healthy places.

The meditative practices of awareness, spontaneity and intimacy are all art-forms that greatly increase the amount of freedom, joy, love and creativity that we have in our life.

3) Meditation as a Spiritual Path – Meditation as a spiritual path is the traditional use of meditation but it does not have to be experienced in an overtly religious context. What we mean here by a “spiritual path” is that the process of meditation helps us to answer two very important questions in our life, namely:

  • Who am I? 
  • What is of ultimate concern or importance in my life? 

With meditation as a spiritual path we are daily using our meditation practice to come back to what is most important to us, and getting in touch with out deepest sense of self, the person that we feel we truly are.

In conclusion
These three purposes of meditation are useful meditation objects in themselves. Careful contemplation of them will reveal directly useful and practical purposes of our own meditation practice in our daily life. The good news is that if we practice meditation in a skillful and balanced way, then we can practice all three purposes at once. We can reduce our stress and heal our inner wounds, we can develop our inner freedom and creativity, and we can remain in touch with that which is most important and fundamental to us in our life.

PS: You can see a previous article that I wrote on these three purposes of meditation HERE.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology

Seven Ways of Creating a Mind of Ease and Inner Wellbeing

One of my favorite personal growth “formulas” was coined by a guy called Timothy W Gallway (of “The Inner Game of Tennis” fame) who said that performance = potential minus interference. What this formula points out is that as often as not is we ourselves that get in our own way at least as much if not more than anything else in our outer environment.

So, the first stage of getting rid of our “inner interference” is learning to create a mind of ease and relaxation. Here are seven short meditative methods for creating a mind of ease and relaxation. They can be done on their own, either as super-short practices done for as little time as 15 seconds, or they can be done in combination with each other, taking a few moments to focus on each one, and then moving onto the next. Here they are:

  1. Create a time for safe space – For a specific period of time consciously recognize that you are at this moment not in any manifest physical danger. Make a decision also to abstain from inner criticism of yourself, and try to feel the Earth and your immediate environment as friendly rather than hostile. Allow your mind to rest in the safe physical and psychological space of these three recognitions for the time you have set aside.
  2. Extend a feeling of warmth and friendliness to yourself – Chose to be a friend to yourself. Focusing on your self-sense, gently extend a feeling of warmth and welcome to it. Relax as deeply as you can into this warm feeling of liking who you are, just for now!
  3. Find something positive to focus on – Mentally search through the last 24 hours. Find some positive achievement, experience of good fortune, recognition of a kindness that you have given someone or other such positive event. Having found such a positive thought focus on it, developing a sense of appreciation and enjoyment for what has transpired.
  4. Concentrate on a single object for a short while – Take a single object such as the breathing and focus on it exclusively for a short period of time. You can temporarily forget about the causes of your stress simply by learning to focus. your mind in this way.
  5. Utilize the exhalation – Following on from point 4, we can combine our focused concentration with a deeper release of stress by imagining inner tension leaving our body and mind on the exhalation. There is a natural releasing or letting go mechanism that happens in our body when we breathe out that we can leverage on consciously.
  6. Abstain from inner criticism – Expanding a little upon point 1, we can set aside a short period of time where we decide that no critical thoughts about ourself are allowed in our mind. Discover that it is possible to shut the door on self criticism for a while, and enjoy the inner space and ease that is created! Excluding critical thoughts of others can also be included in this section.
  7. Be aware of the space between your thoughts – Normally we focus on the content of our consciousness, the thoughts and feelings in our mind. In doing so we become completely oblivious ever present “inner space” that is constantly there in our mind. Setting aside time to focus exclusively upon the space between our thoughts helps us to find a source of wellbeing that is there all the time but that we often overlook!

Meditation is a mind that focuses on a positive object, an object that when we focus on it makes us peaceful and happy. All of the seven points above are simple objects of meditation that, through focusing on we can begin to build our own mind of ease.

A final point, you may find that when you try to use any of the above techniques and you find your mind resisting. For example you may  find that it is very difficult to develop a feeling of liking yourself when you try technique 2. If this happens then rather than struggling and trying to force yourself to get to that feeling simply be aware of your resistance to liking who you are, and take that resistance as your object of meditation. Accepting inner resistance that you encounter in meditation is one way of beginning to let go if the inner tension and blockages that are causing the resistance in the first place.

Categories
Awareness and insight Inner vision Meditation and Art Meditation and Psychology

Reflecting on the Relationship Between Art and Meditation

Here are three areas and life lessons that meditating and making art both teach:

Close Observation

Most of us think we know what the world looks like, but if we examine this assumption we learn it is not as true as we thought. For example if you try and draw a tree you discover that your idea of what a tree looks like and the way in which it actually exists physically in space are very different, and that in order to get to the “real” tree and draw it accurately you have to let go of your idea of the tree and look closely and clearly with your eyes.
In a similar way we may think that we know ourselves well, we think we know who we are. However, when we start meditating, which is partly the discipline of witnessing and observing our mind and self, we discover that the person we think we are and the person that we actually behave like are actually very different. Meditation teaches us the bitter-sweet art of seeing who we REALLY are and trying to bring our self-image and behavior into an authentic and genuine communion.
Both making art and meditation have made me find simple objects and activities very interesting and fulfilling as there is always endless detail and nuance to observe and enjoy. Last Friday I took a bit of time off and went to sit down in East Coast Park and just look at the sea, listen to the wind in the trees and observe the play of the afternoon sunlight across the landscape. I can’t imagine a much more fulfilling time.

How to See Through Difficult Times

If you have ever tried to create a piece of art work you will know that often (though not always) there is a time when everything about the picture seems horrible, ugly and awful, and where the critical voice in your mind is telling you that you may as well give up and trash the whole thing, and that you also may as well give up art too. After a while as an artist you come to expect this ‘phase’ in your work to complete a piece, and you know that the main thing to do is “keep calm and carry on”, steadily working through this phase. You learn that it is part of a natural cycle, and when it happens it just indicates that you are at a certain stage of the creative process. You don’t panic, after a while it can even be enjoyable in a funny way.
Similarly as a meditator you learn that sometimes your mind just goes through dark phases. Sometimes you know the reason, sometimes not, but either way you come to understand through sitting with these dark phases in meditation that they come and go. They are just a part of the processes of life, like the weather; sometimes sunny, sometimes thunderclouds. Either way there is no need to panic, just be present with it and allow it to work itself through your system in a non-harmful way.

Understanding How Beauty is Both Spontaneously Ever Present, and at the Same Time has to be Worked at and Re-created all the Time

As an artist you learn through observing things from multiple angles and points of view that everything has its own type of beauty. As a result, wherever you look you can appreciate something about what you see. At the same time actually creating a  beautiful and authentic piece of art work is a very demanding endeavor requiring a lot of effort physically, mentally and spiritually of the artist. In this way beauty for the artist is something that s/he can always see in what s/he observes, but at the same time the creation of beauty is always effortful and challenging.
Really with meditation practice it works the same way, after meditating for some time you get to a stage where even if there is pain and confusion in your mind, there is also an ever present stillness and beauty that is available to you at all times, you just have to remember it. However, in another sense the daily process of thinking positive, acting out of integrity, creating harmonious relationships often seem to take just as much work and effort as they always did!
This seems to be the paradox of both outer and inner beauty; they are ever present and yet they demand constant effort to create and recreate. However, being in touch with the ever present aspect of inner and outer beauty (which are really states of being) helps us to keep even-minded amidst the struggles and strains of trying to effort-fully create a beautiful inner and outer life for ourselves and others.

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques

Going Beyond the “Do This” and “Do That” Mentality

My daughter has just turned six, and one of the things that I have noticed about our relationship recently is that it has been possible for me to start changing my relationship to her from a lot of “do this” and “do that” instructions to a much more process based “Why don’t you try this?” or “What will happen if you think about it this way?”. Her gradual increase in age and maturity, combined with my own gradual maturing as a parent has allowed our relationship to evolve from being somewhat dictatorial to much more co-creative.

How we often use the “do this / do that” mentality with regard to the way we treat ourselves
One of the things that has struck me when thinking about the changes in my relationship to my daughter is how often we get caught up in a “do this” and “do that” relationship to ourself. “Instead of  approaching situations and challenges in our life with an open, flexible and enquiring mind, often we will simply react in a pre-programmed way, based around our past experience. Internally we order ourselves around with no real sensitivity to what is actually happening and this kills our ability to respond authentically and creatively.
For example I may find myself mentally punishing myself for not having made more effective use of my time during the day. The conversation goes something like:
“You should not have got sidetracked by this, you should not have wasted time doing that, you don’t deserve to relax this evening because you have not achieved what you wanted…” the instructions and judgments go on and on…

What we can replace the Do this/do that mentality with
One of the things that we are trying to create through a meditation practice is enough self-awareness  to be able to respond to our immediate circumstances as they are, without projecting judgments or old values onto them. What we are trying to do is replace the automatic “do this” and “do that” voice of our judgments and past mental programs with questions like:
“What is this situation showing me or offering to me?”
“What are the real emotions behind what is being said here?”
“What is the most creative thing I can do in this situation?”
“What is my most authentic response to what is happening here?
By bringing questions such as these to the forefront of our mind in our daily life we can start to over ride the automatic “do this” and “do that” orders coming from our subconscious mind and start to live a life that involves more freedom, more authenticity and more happiness.

Awareness exercise:
The art of going beyond our “do this” and “do that” mentality lies in replacing these inner orders with a question that stimulates our enquiring mind and creativity. The next time you can hear and feel your old judgments barking orders at you as you try and cope with a life challenge, consciously place this question in the centre of your awareness:
“What is this situation helping me to see and learn?”
Try and stay with this question for a few minutes and observe the creative ideas that start to emerge from the inner space that the question allows.

PS: Heads up on the new series of meditation classes starting at the beginning of September 2011 “Meditations for Creating a Mind of Ease, Appreciation and Positive Intention”. Follow link for details!
© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com